Will they still be dancing? (1982)

direction of "cultural pluralism". In reality, prejudice and discrimination
become more intense, while ideological orientations are propagating norms of
cultural/ethnic uniformity and conformism. This particular kind of "cultural
pluralism" we are witnessing has become a hierarchic ethnic division of labour
(Alund 1985). While there are differences between various immigrant groups
and individual immigrant social mobility, immigrants overwhelmingly dominate
unskilled labour in industry and services, while positions of management
and control tend to be reserved for natives. The introduction of new
technologies and forms of management seems to have consolidated this ethnic
stratification even further (Schierup 1985).
A marginalized position in relation to the distribution of power and the
division of labour in society has increased the need for immigrants'
autonomous organization, a process evident throughout Europe. Increasing
polarization along ethnic lines has stimulated the self-organization of immigrants.
The emergence of immigrant organization should be seen in conjunction
with the emergence of new social movements in general. Polarization between
"public" and "private", the anonymity and bureaucratization of established
social movements and increasing distances between grassroots and central
political bodies have allied to greater needs for local attachment, to organizing
around substantive issues and the problems of identity and influence. Ethnic
minority-cultures have become the response to immigrants' inability to satisfy
key social needs in Scandinavian society. "Ethnic organizations", which might
have begun as a spontaneous reaction against the atomization and exclusiveness
of society, have tended to develop into political platforms.'
The formation of immigrant minority-cultures in Scandinavia and Western
Europe calls into question certain assumptions about the notions of "acculturation"
and "assimilation". At the same time it also questions the notion
of an immigrant "ghetto" as a static ethnic isolate.' We do not regard immigrant
minority cultures simply as the product of isolation; they are not just
an "escape from problems of adaptation" (Diedrich & Diedrich 1975). Rather
they are the product of increased integration in society and of an ethnic
consciousness which grows out of interaction with Scandinavian culture.
Hence, interaction between different cultures in society simultaneously creates
both bonds of interdependence and a consciousness of social differences and
inequalities. It is in this process that socio-cultural change takes place, expressing
itself both through changes in society at large and in the transformation of
each particular group. The formation of ethnic minority-cultures among immigrants
is typically connected with the ethnohistorical past of each group, but
not as any static repetition of "tradition". Rather, redefinitions which use this
past become means of defining and coping with new situations. Through the
symbolic manipulation of the past, conflicts rooted in the "ethnohistorical
heritage" are mediated and transformed.
In pursuing this argument, this book begins by presenting the ethnohistori-
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